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Sweet Home Alabama: Birmingham Design Confidential

World-ranked French furniture dealer Mary Helen Mccoy shows off the best of Birmingham

Written by Doris Athineos

Stiletto-shod Francophiles hop a plane to Paris and head for the glitzy Biennale des Antiquaires to find royal antiques , while the less well-heeled and more intrepid trek to the South of France flea-market finds. But these days, some savvy collectors turn south at the Mason-Dixon, toward Birmingham, to satisfy their taste for bergères and bureaux plats as well as bouillabaisse and café au lait.

Birmingham? If you have to ask, you haven't caressed the crisply carved French furniture at Mary Helen McCoy Antiques . Nestled in Mountain Brook Village, an "over-the-mountain" Birmingham suburb, the shop's light-filled rooms are stocked with polished 18th-century commodes and glittering gilt mirrors named after kings.

You shouldn't be surprised to find me in Birmingham," snaps proprietress Mary Helen McCoy with the verve of a hometown girl defending her turf. "There's a whole heck of a lot happening here." And a lot of it is happening in Mary Helen's own antique furniture shop.

If you're looking for an ordinary antique shop, best not shop here. Mary Helen is one of the few American dealers invited to join the prestigious Syndicat National des Antiquaires, the elite French dealers' association that organizes the Paris Biennale. Also a member of the Art and Antiques Dealers League of America, she has clients around the country and travels with prized furniture to top antiques fairs in Palm Beach and New York.

The Deep South, however, is where she prefers to find homes for her vintage treasures. "French furniture isn't just furniture but a lifestyle, and clearly, Southerners know how to live well and entertain," she explains.

She advocates pairing a couple of flirty fauteuils or a chic carved console ("the best you can afford") with boldly painted Italian faience, a handsome but comfy contemporary sofa covered in linen velvet, and splashy modern art on the walls to create fresh, lively rooms that exude effortless elegance. "Without antiques, family photographs, and other ties to the past, a room is empty," she opines.

What Mary Helen sells are the remains of an aristocratic lifestyle. "The nobility furnished their countryside châteaux with fine furniture," she notes. "Often the wood was left au naturel, but the furniture was certainly not rustique." Before she and husband Ron launched the business in 1990, Mary Helen was an assistant to Frances Emond, who owned Wardemond, once the best antiques shop in Birmingham. Together, they went on buying trips to Europe where Mary Helen fell hard for French furniture. "I grew up surrounded by beautiful things-Oriental rugs and English furniture and ceramics," says the former arts student. "But French antiques are my addiction."

What Mary Helen sells are the remains of an aristocratic lifestyle. "The nobility furnished their countryside châteaux with fine furniture," she notes. "Often the wood was left au naturel, but the furniture was certainly not rustique." Before she and husband Ron launched the business in 1990, Mary Helen was an assistant to Frances Emond, who owned Wardemond, once the best antiques shop in Birmingham. Together, they went on buying trips to Europe where Mary Helen fell hard for French furniture. "I grew up surrounded by beautiful things-Oriental rugs and English furniture and ceramics," says the former arts student. "But French antiques are my addiction."

In her shop, we survey the fruits of her yearly shopping trips to the French countryside. A showy Louis XIV marquetry commode bejeweled with elaborate bronze mounts outshines a towering lyonnaise armoire. The surface of the three-drawer chest served as a kind of canvas for marquetry master Thomas Hache (1664-1747), who arranged hand-sawn slivers of contrasting-colored woods (ebony, olive, and walnut) into flowery pictures. "Hache was to marquetry what Boulle was to brass," says Mary Helen, who is asking $450,000 for the commode.

Less formal but no less spectacular is a Régence walnut console, which Mary Helen describes as a table à gibier. Edged with a leafy frieze and capped with a thick slab of marble the color of greenbacks, the table served to cool roasted pheasant, ducks, and other game, or gibier, in the early 18th cen tury. But today's hunters in the field shoot for domesticated tables rather than wild boar. Mary Helen insists that her shop is but one of many Birmingham "must sees." Within seconds, out tumbles a playlist of the city's greatest hits, which she gamely agrees to share. Great restaurants and cafés, a growing art and antiques scene, a civil-rights museum, a science center, a botanical garden, a zoo, and plenty of Southern charm are promised-and delivered.

What's missing is attitude. When I couldn't pony up for an iced tea at Birmingham's boho hot spot Chez Lulu because I left my wallet back at the hotel, the waitress told me not to fret. "Drop by later to pay your debt," she said with a wide smile. This was a stunning gesture that perhaps only a New Yorker can fully appreciate.

Mary Helen's admiration for antiques extends well beyond France's borders. Fueled on pimento-cheese sandwiches and limeade from Gilchrist Drugstore, the eagle-eyed dealer shows where the treasures are buried. "The Birmingham Museum of Art (BMA) has the largest collection of Wedgwood outside of England," boasts Mary Helen, who is also a museum trustee. "It's going to blow you away." And she's right. Larger than its nearest rival, Atlanta's High Museum, BMA does indeed have not only the largest but the best collection of Wedgwood beyond the doors of London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

A sexy, low-slung Italian chair upholstered in slate-blue satin at Gallery terrence Denley slows us down. Owned by Terry Slaughter, the gallery plows the bulk of its proceeds into two charities, so spending here is positively a civic duty (www.terrencedenley.com). But even without the added incentive, who can resist the softly curved Deco chairs redressed in swish silk fabrics?

And if you're searching for vintage estate jewelry for somebody special (like yourself!), stop by AMW . "It is the place for old silver and out-of-this-world jewelry," advises Mary Helen. AMW are the initials of three friends (Lynn Adams, Margot Marx, and Barbara Walthall) who first set up her antique shop together back in 1981. You won't find AMW unless you inquire. It's tucked into the back shop of Mary Adams Antiques.

Some of the most exotic decorative arts we found were underfoot, at King's House Oriental Rugs, where owner Alice Schleusner holds court sitting atop a mound of centuries-old Persian carpets. Alice, one of two certified rug appraisers in Alabama, has floored three generations of Birminghamians with unique carpets. "When you buy something of quality, it always retains value," says Alice. "I'm delighted whenever a rug that I sold 35 years ago comes back to me to be traded. I've worked with three generations-grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. We're pretty big on tradition here."

When she isn't selling, Alice trains docents at the Birmingham Museum of Art. "One of the biggest mistakes that rug buyers make is to rely on the knot count as an indicator of quality," says the energetic Alice as she unfurls more rugs to make her point. "Even with a high knot count, you can get a flimsy rug. Handle the rug to get an indication of quality. You want it to have some body."

Mary Helen has her priorities, and like the French, eating well is one of them. Soon the hunt for beauty gives way to the feast at Hot and Hot Fish Club, "a darling place," says Mary Helen. But what's up with the name? Chef and owner Chris Hastings says it's part of his heritage that goes back to the mid-1700s. "My great-great-great grandfather established the Hot and Hot Fish Club in South Carolina for men who loved to fish and eat," explains Chris. Back then on Pawleys Island, "hot and hot" meant fresh food-"fish caught, cooked, and served the same day." Savor the hot and hot tomato salad with fried okra and juicy bits of corn. And don't dare leave without sampling the surprising (for a fine restaurant) dessert-donuts dusted with vanilla sugar.

Sample Southern hospitality with fine food and lodging. To indulge in the city's extraordinary regional cooking, visit one of Chef Frank Stitt's four restaurants; then relax at a local hotel or-soon-a brand-new resort and spa in a Renaissance-style castle

One of America's top five restaurants: "The Food at Highlands Bar and Grill is so outstanding that you may not notice the French posters by Art Deco designer A.M. Cassandre on the walls," says Mary Helen. Do notice the martini-neither shaken nor stirred, but "muddled," or churned, with a wooden spoon so it gets cold enough to form a film of ice.

If you forget reservations, take a seat at the bar and order crunchy Apalachicola oysters. Chef/owner Frank Stitt, who recently penned Southern Table, tells us his secrets. "I take some of the old, simple foods and flavors of the rural South and bring brightness to them through French inspiration," says Stitt. "The South has been a land of small farms. To use the food of the creeks and the fields is to honor that tradition."